In The Ashes
by Luciiraptar
Summary: "Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask them if honor matters." Post-game Javik.


__**A/N: Based on Javik's line in ME3, and later conversations. I'm thinking about doing this with more characters, stories based on good quotes. Leave reviews with your thoughts. Or just leave reviews. Either works.**

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_Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask them if honor matters._

Javik could remember speaking those words to Commander Shepard, not so long ago. Back then, it had seemed like a valid statement. He had spoken his experience: Honor had gotten the Protheans nowhere. It had gotten them destroyed, turned into monsters.

It had gotten him trapped in a time far beyond his own, the last of a forgotten race.

But then—he'd watched Shepard do what he'd thought impossible. He'd watched her broker peace between synthetics and organics. She saved an entire species from extinction, giving them the chance to be proud again, as Javik had heard they once were. She was generous to a fault—she tried to save that Illusive Man from himself, where Javik would have simply shot him and moved on. It was strange, yet comforting to him.

When she died—sent that lovely red shockwave through the galaxy—_destroyed_ the Reapers, finally—she left a better a place. The krogan had a single leader. The quarians returned to their homeworld. The turians, asari, salarians rebuilt. The humans rebuilt. So many lives were saved, because Shepard acted with honor, and Javik was glad that she did, because she showed him the truth of the galaxy: Those that were weak did require protection, and his people were wrong.

He was wrong.

So here he was: Standing in the ashes of his people, one of the thousand battlefields where those that called themselves Prothean died by the trillions. They threw everything they were at the Reapers, and they died.

He had walked the battlefield at first. After dropping him off, the Normandy had stayed for a while, and the asari—Doctor T'Soni—had walked with him. She hadn't left Shepard's room in days, but she left to walk with him across the broken landscape his people had left.

They walked together for two days before he ordered her to go back to the ship. He would meditate, and then he would let himself fade away. They had spoken all they would speak; she could do with his life what she wished, for he was done with it.

And so his meditations had begun.

He had no food; it was offered, but he rejected. Whether by starvation or his own hand, his death would come when it was ready for him. It certainly would not come any other way: this world had been stripped bare, destroyed utterly and completely by those monsters.

On the third day, his men appeared to him. "Javik," one greeted. "Are they destroyed?"

Javik nodded. "It is done. A human by the name of Shepard unleashed the power of their Crucible. The relays were damaged, but repaired. The Reaper threat is no more."

One of them sneered. "A human? They lived in caves in our time. They used sticks and large rocks against each other."

Javik sighed into the hallucination, and replied, "They live on stations now, and they are more powerful than we could ever be. We were disparate races, trying desperately for unity—and she truly united them all." It was a revelation, catharsis. "We were animals scrambling in the dark, looking for a way, trying to gather more under us so we could throw them at the Reapers—and when we removed our legs, we fell."

His men disappeared after that.

He supposed he should have said goodbye to them.

Hours later, his daughter appeared to him. She wasn't his, not biologically. He had found her on the streets, and taken her in as his daughter. When she died, he'd thrown himself into destroying the Reapers.

"Hello, papa," the girl said simply. "Are you here to be with me again? I miss your stories."

Javik smiled at her. "Yes, child, I am here to join you. I will tell you stories, in time. But for now, I would like to sit and rest a while. It has been a long journey, and I am tired." Familiar words, spoken whenever the young man had returned home from whatever he had been doing. In the beginning, he had been a volunteer, not a soldier, and his job had been to help build barricades, to protect the civilians. The ones who didn't know how to fight. Supposedly, the Protheans believed that all weak should die so the strong would flourish. In practice, they protected their own weak.

The girl smiled brilliantly. "Well, papa, when you are ready, come to me. We can cook together, and tell stories." And she threw her arms around him in a familiar gesture, and then she was gone.

"I will," he promised the air.

With that, he leaned back and began thinking of Shepard again. The woman who had saved the galaxy; the woman who had saved him. Most were in love with her, which Javik found amusing, particularly because Shepard never looked at anything except her asari. Even on missions, her eyes would drift to her lover's body, only to blush when Javik called her attention back to the firefight.

It was… interesting. There was no time for romance in his time, not with the hurry of barricades and warfare. There was time for couplings, to try and produce more of them for the next waves of battle, but there was no time for the sort of love that Liara and Shepard seemed to share.

Javik had once taken the time to point out how people were around Shepard to Liara. The woman had just leaned back, smiled, and said, "Not you, though."

Javik had nodded. "Not me. Even if I were inclined—she is yours, Doctor T'Soni. I respect that."

Perhaps, it occurred to Javik suddenly, he had his own honor in all of this. Perhaps he had still held onto it, no matter how many of his people he had let die—or killed with his own hands. He had been with Shepard for most of it. He and Liara were hurt badly in the final charge, that last attempt to reach the Citadel. He had helped Shepard, even as she helped him.

It had been four days. Javik slowly stepped out of his armor; he could feel himself dying. He would be with the rest of his people soon.

He stepped away from it—towards nothing, oblivion. Blissful rest.

Soon there would be a trillion and one souls.

And he had his honor.


End file.
